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12-20-2009

Catholic Student Protest and Campus Change atLoyola University in New Orleans, 1964-1971Robert LorenzUniversity of New Orleans

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Catholic Student Protest and Campus Change at Loyola University in New Orleans, 1964-1971

A Thesis

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the

University of New Orleans

in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

in

History

by

Robert Lorenz

B.A., Loyola University New Orleans, 2002

December 2009

ii

Table of Contents

Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iii

Introduction ..........................................................................................................................1

Body of Thesis .....................................................................................................................6

Conclusion .........................................................................................................................44

Notes ..................................................................................................................................45

Bibliography ......................................................................................................................49

Vita .....................................................................................................................................52

iii

Abstract

This study analyzes the development of the student protest movement at Loyola

University New Orleans from1964 to 1971. It focuses on student protests against racial

discrimination and the Vietnam War, student agitation for greater freedom on campus, and

battles that Loyola‘s faculty had with the university administration. This study argues that

Loyola‘s student protesters were acting as Catholics against situations they believed were

immoral and unjust. In this sense, they were ahead of the Jesuit clergy at Loyola, who took

action only after student protest on those issues. Indeed, student protest filled a void of moral

leadership that the Jesuit administration at Loyola failed to provide. Moreover, in the areas of

student participation in university governance, changes in curriculum and university restrictions,

and student rights and freedoms, the student protesters joined with Catholic commentators who

advocated for major changes at the country‘s Catholic universities.

History—United States—Louisiana—New Orleans—Catholics—Loyola University—Student

protests—1960s

1

Introduction

In November 1964, several black students from Loyola University of New Orleans

entered Phillip‘s Restaurant, a popular establishment close to the campus, and were denied

service by the restaurant‘s owner. Several weeks later a small group of students from the area‘s

universities – Loyola, Tulane, Dillard, Xavier, and Louisiana State University at New Orleans –

picketed the restaurant. Loyola had held a lecture series that fall on the Civil Rights Act of 1964

in an attempt to ―examine the Act in its religious, legal, political, economic, sociological, and

international implications and…to suggest potential means for peaceful and orderly compliance

with its various provisions.‖ The owner‘s refusal was in violation of the Act, yet the university

administration issued no public statement condemning the discrimination at Phillip‘s

Restaurant.1 In the December 11, 1964 issue of the school‘s student newspaper, the Maroon, an

editorial titled ―Responsibility Lacking‖ addressed the university‘s seemingly contradictory

position on racial discrimination in New Orleans. The editors stated that ―it is unpardonable that

Catholic universities like…Loyola disregard the opportunity to champion the principles they

should uphold.‖2

Two months later, in February 1965, a group of about two dozen students, calling itself

―Students for Integration‖ and joined by faculty members from both Loyola and Tulane, staged a

sit-in at Phillip‘s. The owner had by this time changed the restaurant into a ―private club‖ with a

five-dollar annual membership ―available only to white patrons.‖ When one black student

handed the owner a membership card that he had obtained from another student, the owner tore

up the card. A waiter then grabbed the student by the ear and attempted to forcefully remove

him from the building. After tearing up another membership card belonging to John Joerg, a

faculty member in Loyola‘s English department, the owner called her lawyer and the police. The

2

police allowed the protesters to stay but did not force the owner to serve them. For the rest of the

evening, as a local news crew filmed the events, the protesters continued their sit-in while

picketers stood outside the building.3

The Maroon articles and the demonstration at Phillip‘s Restaurant were the first

significant events in Loyola‘s participation in the student protest movement then spreading

throughout the country‘s campuses. From 1964 until 1971, through demonstrations, petitions,

and articles in the Maroon, Loyola became a small yet full participant in that movement. A

small group of students – editors and staff at the Maroon, black student groups, and other

campus activists – agitated and demanded that the university community confront those issues

that came to define the student movement: civil rights, the Vietnam war, and student rights and

freedoms. Moreover, the students at Loyola were not alone in their protest. Sympathetic faculty

members wrote opinion pieces and letters to the editor of the Maroon and joined them at

demonstrations. Moreover, the faculty engaged in their own battles against the university

administration. By the end of the decade, the efforts of these student and faculty protestors

helped to bring significant change to the university, from race relations on campus to university

governance.

The demonstrations at Philip‘s Restaurant highlight what would be a crucial aspect of the

student protest movement at Loyola. In their protests against racial discrimination and the

Vietnam War, the students were acting as Catholics against situations they believed were

immoral and unjust. In this sense, they were ahead of the Jesuit clergy at Loyola, who took

action only after student protest on those issues. Indeed, student protest filled a void of moral

leadership that the Jesuit administration at Loyola failed to provide. Moreover, in the areas of

student participation in university governance, changes in curriculum and university restrictions,

3

and student rights and freedoms, the student protesters joined with Catholic commentators who

advocated for major changes at the country‘s Catholic universities.

The major primary source used in this study is the Maroon, Loyola‘s student newspaper.

It has provided coverage not only of the major events and developments of the student protest

movement at Loyola, but also crucial insight into the comments and thoughts of Loyola‘s

students, faculty, and administrators at the time. Another important source is Ralph Adamo, an

English major who served on the Student Council, wrote editorials for the Maroon, and

participated in many of the student protests at Loyola. He provided key insights in an interview I

conducted with him. The Times-Picayune, a major New Orleans daily newspaper, has also been

used.

The secondary literature on 1960s student protest is vast. A good overview of student

protest activities across the globe is Student Protest: The Sixties and After (London: Longman,

1998), edited by Gerard DeGroot. Jeremi Suri, Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the

Rise of Détente (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003) analyzes student protest

movements in the United States, France, Germany, and China in a Cold War context. Students in

Revolt, edited by Seymour Lipset, is older, but still contains valuable essays on international

student protest movements. Much of the work on American universities focuses on the

spectacular events at the University of California at Berkeley and at Columbia University in New

York. Three recent treatments of Berkeley are The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on

Berkeley in the 1960s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), edited by Robert Cohen

and Reginald E. Zelnick, At Berkeley in the Sixties: The Education of an Activist, 1961-1965

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), by Jo Freeman, and Berkeley at War, the 1960s

(New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), by W. J. Rorabaugh. For Columbia, see Jerry L.

4

Avorn et al, University in Revolt: A History of the Columbia Crisis (London: Macdonald, 1968),

Terry Anderson, The Movement and the Sixties (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), and

Arthur Marwick, The Sixties: Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy, and the United

States, c. 1958 – c. 1974 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

Other works have focused on Midwestern universities like the University of Wisconsin-

Madison and Kent State. Robbie Lieberman, Prarie Power: Voices of 1960s Midwestern Student

Protest (Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 2004) collects interviews from

participants in the student protest movement at four public universities in the Midwest, while

Mary Ann Wyncoop, Dissent in the Heartland: The Sixties at Indiana University (Bloomington:

Indiana University Press, 2004) provides a study of another Midwestern university. Kenneth J.

Heineman, Campus Wars: The Peace Movement at American State Universities in the Vietnam

Era (New York: New York University Press, 1993) focuses exclusively on the anti-war activities

of student protesters.

Student protest activities at Louisiana‘s universities have received some treatment.

Gregory Duhe, ―The FBI and Students for a Democratic Society at the University of New

Orleans, 1968-1971,‖ in Louisiana History, 43 (Winter 2000), 53-74, details the attempts of the

Federal Bureau of Investigation to infiltrate and disrupt the activities of student protesters at that

university. Valera Theresa Francis‘s doctoral dissertation, ―Pride and Paradox: The History and

Development of Southern University at New Orleans, 1954-1975,‖ covers the student protests

there, which were led mainly by black student activists agitating for better facilities and the

addition of a black studies department to the university. In Tulane: The Emergence of a Modern

University, 1945-1980 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001), Clarence L. Mohr

and Joseph E. Gordon detail in two chapters that university‘s tumultuous student protests, which

5

culminated in the firebombing of an ROTC building in May 1970. The present study is the first

historical analysis of the student protest movement at Loyola University New Orleans. It fills in

gaps on the history of the student protests of the 1960s by focusing on a Southern, Catholic

university. Its insistence on the centrality of Catholic thought in the actions of the student

protesters sets it apart from other studies and adds another dimension to our understanding of the

role that religion played in the student protest movement.

6

Body of Thesis

Loyola University was founded in 1904 by the New Orleans Society of Jesus as Loyola

College of the South. It was located several miles west of the Central Business District and

French Quarter, in the wealthy residential section of uptown New Orleans. Tulane University sat

next door, its gray stone buildings shaded by oak trees in contrast to Loyola‘s sun-drenched, red

brick structures; both schools faced Audubon Park from across St. Charles Avenue. On Loyola‘s

campus, a statue of Jesus Christ with his arms outstretched, palms up to the sky, stood in the

middle of a broad lawn fronting the avenue. It was the largest Catholic university in the entire

South during the 1960s, with a total enrollment per year of around 4000 students. Most of its

students, including those from out of state, came from private, Catholic high schools.

Historically, the major functions of the Catholic university in America were to ―train

clergy and defend the faith,‖ and vestiges of this twin mission remained in place at Loyola.4 All

students had to take fifteen hours each of theology and philosophy, regardless of their major.

The university library operated on a ―closed stacks‖ system in which only the librarian could

retrieve books. The Index Librorum Prohibitorum, a list of texts banned by the church,

prohibited even faculty from looking at certain books housed in the library. Regulations such as

these contributed to the popular notion that Catholic universities were conservative, anti-

intellectual institutions.

Loyola‘s campus culture appeared politically and socially conservative as well. White

Catholic New Orleanians, Democratic for generations but upset with President Lyndon

Johnson‘s civil rights agenda, largely bolted from the Democratic Party in the presidential

election of 1964. Similarly, in a mock election on campus, students delivered Republican

Senator Barry Goldwater a victory over President Lyndon Johnson by a margin of forty-seven

7

percent to forty-two percent. Along with most other university students around the country,

Loyola‘s students were subject to in loco parentis restrictions. As the policy was understood at

the time, the university was responsible for acting in the place of parents, ensuring that students

living away from home had the supervision and regulation to maintain discipline and good

conduct, and to grow as people. To this end, dormitories had strict regulations and students were

expected to adhere to the university dress code. Further, all male students were required to take

two years of Reserve Officers‘ Training Corps (ROTC) instruction.

The events and members of the fraternities and sororities, honor societies, and sports

teams dominated daily life on Loyola‘s campus and the pages of the Maroon. The annual talent

contest, in which groups of students danced, put on skits, and sang popular songs, received front-

page coverage; black-and-white photographs showed award-winning students, smiles frozen in

celebration of their achievement. Without exception, the photographs in the front pages were of

white faces, but black students were not completely excluded from the student paper.

Occasionally, in the sports section at the back of the Maroon, Loyola‘s black student athletes

dribbled basketballs past defenders and attempted jump shots.

The campus culture convinced some students that Loyola was little more than a grown-up

high school, with cliques, rivalries, and a limited, parochial worldview. In November 1966, one

senior complained, ―[I]f Loyola‘s image were analyzed it would probably be ascertained that

Loyola is at present generally seen as an elevated high school.‖5 Freshman Jim Swinson also

voiced his feelings of frustration in a letter to the editor of the Maroon in December 1966. ―As I

stand out…in Audubon Park,‖ Swinson wrote, ―…enduring the barrage of abuses by khaki-clad

supermen, I suddenly realize [that] Loyola has ceased to be a university, it is a military school

which promises to turn out so many prototypes per year of the close-minded, clean-shaven, bare

8

headed robots demanded by ROTC and the contemporary status quo.‖6 In a printed response, the

editor of the Maroon mocked Swinson, mirroring the sentiments of the majority.

Despite the student demonstrations at Philip‘s Restaurant in December 1964 and

February 1965, Loyola remained quiet during the following school year. Student debate about

the issues in the academic year 1965-1966 was limited almost exclusively to the pages of the

Maroon. Opinion pieces about Vietnam, arguing both for and against the war, appeared more

frequently than reports about civil rights and student issues. Most pieces were supportive of the

war effort. A story in the November 5, 1965 issue titled ―Pro-US petition begun‖ reported on a

petition circulating among students at Loyola‘s law school, declaring that they were against

radical student behavior and that the image of the radical student was not acceptable to them.

Several stories were devoted to Ronald F. Rod, a Loyola graduate serving in Vietnam, and his

plea to the Loyola community to donate supplies such as soap and socks for Vietnamese

refugees. The community responded overwhelmingly to Rod‘s call for Christian charity, and the

drive was a large success. Aside from the articles in the Maroon, the story was also covered

heavily in the local Catholic daily newspaper the Clarion Herald. To refute the charge that

Loyola students were apathetic, one student asserted that Loyola was in fact acting in support of

the war effort, citing the law school petition, the collection of goods for Vietnamese refugees,

and the fact that ―graduates from Loyola are fighting in Viet Nam right now, and there will be

more to go.‖7

That there was little evidence of strong anti-war sentiment on Loyola‘s campus by spring

1966 is not surprising. A large majority of Americans supported the war effort, and this was true

among American Catholics as well: a Gallup poll taken in May 1966 found that fifty-seven

percent of Catholics favored the war. David W. Levy has suggested that American Catholics‘

9

early approval of the war stemmed from their support of fellow Catholics in South Vietnam and

a strong history of anti-communism within the Catholic Church. Among the bishops that made

up the Catholic hierarchy in America, there was little to no public dissent from the pro-war

position forcefully advocated by New York‘s Cardinal Francis Spellman, ―one of the nation‘s

best known and most influential religious leaders.‖ When, in early 1966, only six bishops

replied to a survey on their views of the war, the Catholic periodical Commonweal declared that

―the near total silence must be judged a scandal. Vietnam, in our opinion, is the number one

moral problem confronting the American people, and those entrusted with moral leadership

might be expected to address themselves to it.‖8 With moral leadership coming neither from the

national Catholic hierarchy nor the university administration, students who were against the war

provided such leadership by protesting the war and those from Washington who administered it.

At Loyola, the first such protest took place in the spring of 1966. On April 23, General

Maxwell Taylor came to New Orleans to give a talk at the university. The former Chairman of

the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Ambassador to South Vietnam was serving as a special consultant to

President Lyndon Johnson, and he was on a speaking tour to gather support for the war in

Vietnam. In his speech at the Loyola Field House that evening, Taylor outlined the American

strategy in Vietnam and called the recent elections there the ―founding of a new nation.‖

President Johnson‘s escalation of the war the previous year had increased the level of debate on

the country‘s college campuses. In New Orleans, Tulane University held a teach-in on the war

two months before Taylor‘s appearance, and the Maroon had been devoting more space to

coverage of the war. On the night of the general‘s speech, a number of university students

gathered in protest on Freret Street, at the edge of Loyola‘s campus. A picture in the Maroon

showed students bundled up on a chilly spring evening, displaying anti-war slogans written on

10

poster board such as ―War is a Drag‖ and ―We Need Fewer Generals and More Friends.‖

Counter-protestors gathered across the street with their own signs: ―Dear Peace Creeps – Go

Burn Yourselves‖ and ―Squash the Reds.‖ The majority of students outside of the Loyola Field

House that night were Tulane students. The small group of Loyola students protesting Taylor‘s

talk was joined by members of Tulane University‘s Liberals Club, who were aware of the lack of

activism on Loyola‘s campus. When a reporter asked why there were so few Loyola students at

the demonstration, one Liberals Club member responded, ―Loyola is…politically immature.‖9

The Tulane student‘s comment reveals that others in New Orleans, like the Loyola

students quoted above, found Loyola to be a conservative university with little chance of

becoming a locus of student protest. However, that impression seems incorrect when seen in the

context of the broader student movement around the country by 1966. One survey found that,

during the academic year 1964-65, thirty-eight percent of all American colleges and universities

had experienced civil rights protests by students. By contrast, forty-five percent of American

Catholic institutions had experienced civil rights protests by students, seven percentage points

higher than the national average. During the same year, only twenty-one percent of American

colleges and universities, including eight percent of its Catholic institutions, had seen student

protests over the Vietnam War. That Loyola did not have any protests during that time should

not be seen as ―immaturity‖; it was well within the majority of colleges and universities that saw

no protest over Vietnam. That it had already been in the forefront of civil rights protest and, by

1966, was experiencing student protest on Vietnam, places the university squarely within the

mainstream of the student protest movement as it was developing at the time.10

University administrators around the country were recognizing that a new era in student

activism had begun, and that they would have to rethink some basic assumptions about

11

university governance. Students at Loyola had not yet organized any large campus protests or

attempted to disrupt the operation of the university, but their visible protests against Philip‘s

Restaurant and General Taylor, as well as their published grievances in the Maroon, caused the

administration to take notice. By the 1966-1967 school year, the university had a new president,

the Rev. Homer Jolley, and took its first steps toward engagement and accommodation with

students. The editors of the Maroon took no time in celebrating what they certainly saw as a

new attitude from the administration towards the student body. In the first issue that school year,

an editorial entitled ―180 Degree Turn‖ stated that ―the new administration is willing to regard

the students as a responsible decision making body, someone to be heard and not just ignored.‖11

Two issues later the Maroon reported on the first meeting of a new faculty-student committee,

which was formed out of a ―great need on Loyola‘s campus for a close relationship between the

faculty and students.‖12

The university dress code received much criticism in the pages of the

newspaper for being an unnecessary impingement on student choice, and it was announced in

December 1966 that a committee would be formed to look into revising the current rules. In late

April 1967, students circulated a petition seeking to abolish the ROTC requirement. About fifty

students organized a peaceful demonstration during an annual ROTC parade, designed to

coincide with the presentation of the petition to the administration. By that point, however, the

administration had already decided to cancel mandatory ROTC for the next school year.

University president Homer Jolley told the Maroon at the end of the semester, ―[I]t seems almost

definite that ROTC will be voluntary by September.‖13

Faculty members were also concerned that the university policies prevented a free and

open exchange of ideas on campus. Professors argued for more openness and intellectual

freedom on campus by attacking curriculum requirements. One Jesuit recognized a need to

12

―fumigate the theological atmosphere on campus by making theology courses completely

optional,‖ while another saw the ―lack of forum on campus‖ as one reason why ―the discussion

of issues is not prevalent.‖14

One English professor argued in an editorial against the library‘s

closed stacks system and Loyola‘s adherence to the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. There was

mention of the introduction of student evaluations of faculty members.

The discussions at Loyola that year over changes in university governance, curriculum

requirements, and other university regulations mirrored a larger discussion taking place among

Catholic intellectuals about the future of Catholic universities. In December 1965, the Catholic

Church had concluded the Second Vatican Council, known as Vatican II, which produced a

series of reforms aimed at modernizing the Church and making it more responsive to the needs

of its members. Out of Vatican II came a concern with how to modernize the country‘s Catholic

universities, a task that some recognized would not be easy. One commentator observed that

―the Catholic university is dreadfully afraid of change because it perceives change as a threat to

its religious commitment.‖ Despite this institutional resistance, the commentator recognized that

―Catholic universities and colleges will change in the years ahead, to a considerable extent

precisely as a result of student ferment and agitation.‖ Students at Catholic universities were

―impatient with the almost exclusively passive role previously assigned them in the Catholic

concept of higher education‖ and were ―agitating…to be allowed to play a more determinate role

both in their own education and in the affairs of the university community.‖ Catholic students

were ―challenging university rules and standards which continue as vestiges of educational goals

that are coming to be regarded in a far different perspective.‖ Moreover, ―students (were)

agitating for rights and freedoms which they feel appropriate to a true university.‖ In one

prescient statement, the commentator declared that the turmoil attending the changes at Catholic

13

universities will be ―very little, if the university provides active direction and leadership toward

an ideal to which the entire Catholic university community can respond with intellectual

integrity.‖15

The issues that the commentator highlighted were being discussed at Loyola, and student

and faculty concerns over such issues changed the atmosphere on campus that year. In a Maroon

editorial in May 1967, editor Ferrel Guillory stated that ―the campus is buzzing and the buzzing

is of a different nature than the ordinary Loyola hum….The present discontent – and it is serious

– has come dangerously close to infecting student leaders in a way that could cause trouble all

over the campus….Students are worried about teachers, facilities, and rules.‖16

Other issues of

concern were an upcoming tuition hike, the possible loss of the pharmacy and dentistry schools,

and lack of student and faculty input into university decision-making.

A Maroon editorial in the first issue for the fall 1967 semester expanded upon Loyola‘s

previous ―‘year of discontent,‖ as the editors referred to it. The mood had been created by

―student outcry against philosophy and theology requirements, a protest march against

compulsory ROTC, and demands that the university update its academic, physical, and social

structure in the community it serves.‖ The editorial pointed to signs that Loyola was progressing

and improving, such as the building and renovation of academic facilities, the hiring of new

faculty and administrators, and the liberalization of some course requirements. Moreover, the

editors expressed approval that ―revitalization has taken place in many departments to make the

curriculum more academically challenging to the student,‖ and they concluded with the

statement that ―the students themselves must play an integral role in the progress of Loyola.‖17

To this end, President Jolley announced in December 1967 the formation of a President‘s

Committee on Student Rights and Freedoms to draft a policy statement outlining such rights and

14

freedoms. As the Maroon reported, ―[T]he committee [was] unique in that it is the first time

equal representation has been given to all three segments of the university – administration,

faculty, and students.‖18

The university administration was no doubt influenced in its decision to

form such a committee by the endorsements by several national organizations, including the

United States National Student Association and the American Association of University

Professors, of a ―Joint Statement on the Rights and Freedoms of Students‖ at the end of 1967.

The ―Joint Statement‖ had been in the works since 1966, and by April 1968 was endorsed by all

five of its sponsoring organizations. The presidents of the twenty-eight Jesuit colleges and

universities endorsed the ―Joint Statement‖ at the Association of American Colleges‘ January

1968 meeting. The College and University Executive Committee of the National Catholic

Education Association followed with its own endorsement of the statement.19

Students had won

another small victory earlier in the semester when new dress code regulations were released.

The excitement over the revisions was perhaps mitigated when it was discovered that ―the major

change in the rules…is that the wearing of socks is not mandatory.‖20

Rev. Jolley had given encouraging signs that the administration would establish more

open lines of communication with students and faculty. Despite his pledges, however, an

incident in the spring semester provoked more distrust of the administration from students and

faculty. In early 1968, two Loyola students were arrested on drug charges in an off-campus

apartment; not long afterward, three more students were arrested on similar charges in a different

apartment. The arrested students were expelled from the university, and the administration

began pursuing an aggressive yet covert action to rid the university of its supposed ―drug

problem.‖ The Maroon reported shortly afterward that ―a member of the New Orleans Police

Force worked as an undercover agent on the campus during the recent narcotics crackdown.‖

15

According to the article, police officers had enrolled as ―students‖ for the spring semester and

lived in Biever Hall, and there were suspicions that three more undercover agents remained on

campus.21

In response, over 250 students gathered the next week in front of the dormitories in

protest of the administration‘s undercover strategy. Thirty-five faculty members signed a letter

of protest ―asking for a reason why the administration has allegedly ‗violated the right of

freedom of discussion between students and students, students and faculty, and faculty and

faculty.‖ Thomas Preston, a professor in the English department and spokesman for the group of

faculty circulating the letter, expressed support for the demonstration and stated that ―such action

[by the administration] destroys the idea of a university‖ and the administration needed ―to work

with the faculty and students so such an event may never occur again.‖ 22

For his part, President

Jolley issued a statement in which he ―promised the faculty that a mechanism will be set up in

the near future to give full study towards formulating a university policy that will both protect

the spirit of confidence between students, faculty and administration, and also furnish effective

means for protecting the University community against problems such as the presence of

narcotics pushers on campus.‖23

The next week Jolley announced that an ―ad hoc committee of

students, faculty, and administrators will be established for the purpose of ‗considering and

recommending policy guidelines for future handling of cases similar to the recent narcotics case

involving the police undercover agent.‘‖24

Tensions over the use of undercover police agents came out into the open at Loyola, but

tensions over troubled race relations on campus often simmered just underneath the surface.

New Orleans was the nation‘s only big city that did not experience major race riots during the

1960s. Adam Fairclough attributes this to blacks in New Orleans being ―members of the oldest

16

urban black community in America.‖ As such, they ―did not feel the sense of alienation so

common among recent migrants‖ to other cities throughout the South and in the North. In

contrast, blacks in New Orleans had ―a sense of belonging‖ to their community and they did not

want to see it destroyed by violence.25

Though there were no major riots, the push to secure

voting rights for blacks and the struggle to integrate schools and public facilities had created an

atmosphere of high racial tension in the city.

During the spring semester of 1968 the Maroon began giving more coverage to the state

of race relations at Loyola. Despite the election that semester of Edgar Chase as the first black

student council member, the articles made it clear that Loyola was in need of serious

examination and action concerning campus race relations. The February 2 issue contained a

special report on black students at Loyola, focusing primarily on their place in Loyola‘s

fraternity and sorority system. There was not one Greek organization at Loyola that included a

black student as a member, and the fraternity members that were interviewed were candid about

not accepting blacks as a de facto matter of policy. One fraternity president was quoted as

saying that ―the entire fraternity system is built on selectivity with brotherhood as its aim. And,

integration here in the South just hasn‘t reached the brotherhood stages.‖ The head of another

fraternity said that, despite the deletion of a clause in the group‘s constitution specifying that all

members must be white, the ―organization was founded 50 years ago on the principle that it was

a group for white, Christian men. That‘s been the tradition, and we‘re all great traditionalists.‖

Black students interviewed for the article recounted examples of discrimination and prejudice by

white students. One recalled that he had been chastised by a white student for being ―unnatural,‖

because he did not behave like other black students who ―knew their place‖ and ―acted

accordingly.‖ Another stated that none of his white friends would come to his dorm room or sit

17

by him in the cafeteria for more that a few minutes. White students also reported harassment for

taking interracial mingling too far. Two white female students who violated one of the strongest

of racial taboos by dancing with a black student at a university function were told that they were

―cutting their own throats.‖26

Later in February 1968, editor Ferrel Guillory reported that no black students were

among the 114 accepted to the university‘s fraternities that season, and in March the university

formed a committee to investigate racial discrimination by campus organizations.27

In April, a

full-page statement written by Ron Nabonne, the leader of the black student group, Expression,

laid out the group‘s frustrations with the status of race relations at Loyola and listed five

demands to the administration. The group called for, among other things, desegregation of all

campus organizations, the hiring of additional black faculty members, and the addition to the

curriculum of courses ―on the Negro heritage and culture in America.‖28

One student wrote to

the Maroon to complain that ―the small minority of participants in the campus memorial service

for Dr. Martin Luther King is a symptom of the disease called racial prejudice‖ that was

widespread at the university.29

Indeed, a Maroon editorial declared in its final issue that year

that ―the racial situation…is probably the number one problem on campus and needs more

attention and concern than too many at Loyola are inclined to give it.‖30

Looking back on the events of the 1967-68 school year, the editors of the Maroon saw

reason for both hope and suspicion. The new administration had accepted the establishment of a

Student Rights and Freedoms Committee, liberalized some curriculum requirements, and showed

movement towards relaxing its hold on other aspects of student conduct at the university.

However, students also believed that the administration had violated student trust by placing

18

undercover police in dorm rooms. Hovering above all of this, too, was the volatile atmosphere

of racial tension on campus.

Student protest during the school year of 1968-1969 would be dominated by the two

issues of student rights and civil rights. In the fall of 1968, the university administration

announced the adoption of a policy on what it called ―disruptive student demonstrations‖ as well

as a Policy Statement on Student Rights and Freedoms. The first policy was drafted following

the previous semester‘s demonstration against the university‘s use of undercover police agents

on campus. The administration also likely considered the massive and often violent campus

demonstrations that had taken place across the country that same spring. In April, anti-war

students at Columbia University in New York had occupied buildings for over a week; violence

erupted when police arrived in the middle of the night to remove the protesters, resulting in

severe injuries to both students and police, and over seven hundred arrests. Even more intense

violence occurred there the next month when police were called out following another student

takeover of the campus.31

Also that spring, students and police clashed in the streets of Paris,

Berlin, and Mexico City, and in August radical students took the lead in the rioting and

destruction during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.32

Loyola‘s administration

believed the policy ―was necessary to provide for any ‗contingency‘.‖ The policy lists several

steps to be taken by university officials should a demonstration become ―disruptive,‖ including

calling in members of the New Orleans Police Department if necessary.33

The Policy Statement of Student Rights and Freedoms had been in preparation since

December 1967, and it was created with input from administrators, faculty, and students. The

Maroon published the document in its October 11, 1968 issue. The draft began by stating that

Loyola was founded for ―the purpose of promoting education at the University level, in

19

accordance with principles that are based on the eternal truths and for the greater honor and glory

of God and country.‖ It declared that ―students, faculty, and administration represent the three

integral parts of the community‖ and that ―they share responsibility for the proper functioning of

Loyola University in pursuit of its educational goals.‖ The purpose of the policy statement was

―to enumerate policies to assure students‘ freedom to learn and the concomitant responsibilities

attendant upon this freedom.‖ As freedom to learn first required freedom of opportunity, the

document stressed that applicants to the university enjoyed equal opportunity and would not be

denied on the basis of ―race, religion, and national origin.‖ Moreover, those factors could not be

used to deny students access to the ―facilities and services of the University.‖ Regarding equal

access to membership in campus organizations, the statement seemed more ambiguous. It stated

that ―campus organizations, including those affiliated with an extramural organization, are open

to all students without respect to race, creed, or national origin as a condition for university

recognition.‖ That requirement, however, did not necessarily preclude campus organizations

from denying membership because of ―race, creed, or national origin,‖ and nowhere in the

document was that made explicit.34

The policy statement further discussed the nature of political and academic freedom at

Loyola. It stated that students have a ―freedom of association‖ and outlined rules for campus

organizations. Students had a ―right to question,‖ according to one section, and they were ―free

to examine and discuss all questions of interest to them, and to express opinions publicly and

privately.‖ They were also ―free to support causes by orderly means which do not disrupt the

regular and essential operation of the institution.‖ Moreover, it declared that ―any segment of the

academic community is free to invite and to hear any personality and idea presented in university

forum.‖ The document stated the importance of students‘ views on university matters, and it

20

stressed that ―the student body should have clearly defined means to participate in the

formulation and application of institutional policy affecting academic and student affairs.‖ The

policy statement established a University Board of Communications, made up of students,

faculty, and administrators, to set procedures for, among other things, ―the appointment and

removal of editors and broadcast managers.‖

In addition, according to the statement, in instances where students got into legal trouble

off campus, ―the authority of the University should be asserted only in cases in which a clear and

present danger to the academic community exists.‖ The statement outlined the rights of students

when facing charges from the university that might require disciplinary action. The university

stated that it had an ―obligation to publish those standards of behavior which it considers

essential to its educational mission and community life‖ and declared that ―standards of conduct‖

should be ―formulated by the academic community with significant student participation.‖

Something like a search warrant would be needed for university officials to search the residence

of any student living on campus, and the student, ―if possible,‖ should be present when the

search occurred. The document established a Student Judicial Court and a University Board of

Appeals and set forth procedures to be followed during student disciplinary hearings. Decisions

on amendments to the document were to be made by the Committee on Student Rights and

Freedoms and the president of the university.

Students generally applauded the Policy Statement on Student Rights and Freedoms, and

the university soon got its first opportunity to test the document. Steve Vakas, a reporter for the

Maroon, had tried in December 1968 to get the Word, a locally published, leftist political

magazine, distributed through the university bookstore. The administration prohibited the sale of

the Word as well as the distribution of the Catalyst, a newspaper published by the Tulane

21

University Conservative Club. A petition in favor of the Word signed by over one hundred

students and faculty members did not persuade the administration to change its position, and the

decision was appealed to the Committee on Student Rights and Freedoms. This was the first

case to come before the committee, and the outcome could have importance in setting precedents

for future cases. The committee, which was made up of students, faculty, and administrators,

voted against the administration‘s decision, saying that ―it could see ‗no reason why the Word

cannot be sold on campus.‘‖35

President Jolley‘s subsequent decision to ignore the committee‘s ruling set up a brief

confrontation between the administration on one side, and students and faculty on the other. The

Student Council passed a resolution threatening that ―if student rights are continued to be

ignored,…the council will advise all students on all joint student-faculty-administration

committees to resign.‖36

Some faculty believed that Jolley‘s actions rendered impotent and made

a mockery of the Committee on Student Rights and Freedoms. The University Senate passed a

resolution which ―called for the immediate liquidation of the student rights committee with the

understanding that no such committee be re-established in the future‖ until the administration

gave ―substantial assurance that the decisions of such a committee will be given full respect and

wholehearted and unequivocal support in any and all cases.‖37

Students and faculty were

angered not only by Jolley‘s stance on the issue, but also by the fact that his decision had not

been made according to correct procedures. It was the violation of procedure that produced the

Student Council‘s resolution, which also urged the president to formally implement or veto the

decision of the student rights committee. Jolley followed the correct procedures at the end of the

semester, and on May 13, 1969, he officially vetoed the decision of the Committee on Student

Rights and Freedoms to allow the distribution of the Word on Loyola‘s campus.

22

Beyond the controversy surrounding the Word, the much larger issue that school year was

civil rights, as outrage at the poor state of race relations on campus erupted in the spring

semester. Steve Vakas reported in the February 28, 1969 issue of the Maroon that two students,

a white male and black female, had gone together to Cusimano‘s Lounge, an establishment not

far from campus on Prytania Street which was frequented by Loyola students and used as a

venue for fraternity events. When the man ordered from the bar, the bartender refused him

service and asked that he and his date leave. On campus the next day, a Jesuit priest reportedly

approached the white student and asked him if it was true that he had gone out with ―a colored

girl last night.‖ When the student replied that he had, the priest allegedly informed him that ―we

here at Loyola frown on that type of thing.‖38

Following the publication of Vakas‘s article, students, faculty, administrators, and

community members met to form a plan of action against Cusimano‘s Lounge. Donald Brady, a

member of Loyola‘s Department of Drama and Speech, and the Rev. Harold Cohen, the

university chaplain, had already met with the owner of the lounge to persuade him to change his

policy. The owner refused and attempted to obtain a court injunction prohibiting a protest of

Cusimano‘s. When a judge refused to issue the injunction, the group scheduled a

demonstration.39

For three nights, several dozen people picketed outside the building. New

Orleans police were present and customers inside the lounge drank and watched the protest. One

sophomore commented that ―the people have a good point, but the owner of the lounge has his

constitutional rights and he has to do what he thinks is right.‖ Another student claimed that

―Negroes aren‘t accomplishing anything by this and are only hurting themselves.‖40

When it

was over, the protest participants believed that they had not only successfully called attention to

discriminatory racial policies at Cusimano‘s, but they had accomplished something else as well.

23

The Maroon believed the demonstration was important because it ―was not just a student

demonstration, as the anti-undercover agent demonstration primarily was last year. It was also a

faculty and administration decision‖ to protest Cusimano‘s policies.41

Throughout the previous academic year, the fraternities at Loyola had been criticized in

the Maroon by students, faculty, and administrators for practicing racial discrimination. In a

letter to the editor, brothers Martin and Ralph Adamo wrote, in response to a black couple being

asked to leave a fraternity event, ―It seems to (us) that if anyone should take the lead in

eliminating social prejudice because of race, it should be social fraternities on a Christian

campus.‖ English instructor Margaret Vandenhaar, who had previously assailed Loyola‘s

adherence to the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, wrote in her Maroon article, ―Greeks: A Herd of

Sheep,‖ that the fraternities helped cast ―a thick, stagnant pall‖ over the university. The Maroon

printed on the front page an open letter from the Rev. Joseph Molloy, Vice-President for Student

Affairs, in which he said that ―we are gravely concerned that some student organizations appear

not to have reached the level of full, warm welcome.‖ Turning away from euphemism one

paragraph later, the Jesuit declared, ―[W]e…expect all campus organizations divest themselves

of any last vestiges of racism and truly accept students on their individual merits.‖

Following the appearance of Vakas‘s article and the protests at Cusimano‘s in March

1969, critics again focused their attacks on the fraternity system. Students and faculty both

complained that the administration had been slow to act against racial discrimination by

fraternities, although the administration had taken steps to end the practice. In the same issue in

which the Vakas‘s article was published, another story described new attempts by the

administration to integrate Loyola‘s fraternities. According to a source quoted in the article, the

university realized that ―in this day and age, this [racial discrimination] is an

24

anachronism….Loyola fraternities should change their black ball system in order to facilitate the

acceptance of Negroes into the organizations.‖42

Heretofore, black students often could not even

get in the door at fraternity events. One black student wrote in the Maroon that he was not

allowed to fully participate in the fraternity rush events because some events were held at

Cusimano‘s, which would not serve him. Ron Nabonne, the head of the black student group

Expression, wrote a full-page article for the Maroon in which he laid out many of the frustrations

felt by black students at Loyola. Nabonne stated that ―the black students have been crying

discrimination for over a year. We have been refused service at bars before and we have also

been refused at fraternity socials with priests present at them.‖43

The presence of Jesuit priests at whites-only fraternity events was an image many critics

exploited. As Catholics, the critics were outraged that fraternities described themselves in their

charters as ―Christian brotherhood‖ organizations, yet practiced such blatant racism. Gilbert

Roxhugh of the Department of Theology produced the most forceful statement from a faculty

member. Roxhugh declared that ―the fraternities are living monuments to anti-brotherhood right

here on campus.‖ Since fraternities were supposedly ―Christian brotherhood‖ organizations,

they ―ought to be in the forefront, not lagging behind the rest of society‖ in integrating.

Moreover, the fraternities were doing damage to the Loyola community by ―calling into question

the very meaning of the university by making respectable a spirit that is the death of decent

religion.‖ Roxhugh demanded that the fraternities change their admissions policies, and he

concluded by recommending that ―every agency on this campus…make life so uncomfortable for

the fraternities that they are embarrassed, if not motivated, into accord with the purposes of this

university.‖44

In a special convocation at the Loyola Field House on March 11, 1969, Dean of

Arts and Sciences Frank Crabtree, who took part in the protests at Cusimano‘s, received a

25

standing ovation for his comments condemning racism on campus. Addressing the members of

Loyola‘s fraternities and sororities, Crabtree said, ―I ask you to look at yourself and think of

yourself. Do you say one thing and then do another?‖45

On April 2, 1969, black students at Southern University at New Orleans (SUNO), a

public university a few miles away near Lake Pontchartrain, had taken the American flag down

from a flagpole on campus and put in its place a black, green, and red flag of Black Liberation.

Hundreds of SUNO students later gathered and proclaimed, ―I pledge allegiance to the Black

Liberation Flag and to the cause for which it stands – Black People together, indivisible for

liberation, self-defense, self-determination. I am prepared to give my life in its defense.‖ Police

entered campus and engaged in brief skirmishes with the protesters. The students then went on

strike and made several demands of the university administration.46

Meanwhile, on Loyola‘s campus, Expression president Ron Nabonne declared that ―we,

the black students at Loyola University, take pride in declaring our full and unconditional

support for our brothers and sisters at SUNO in their struggle for improvements, liberation, and

equality.‖ Expression held a rally at Loyola‘s student center in support of the striking SUNO

students, and Dwight Ott, the group‘s spokesman, declared that ―student unrest at SUNO has

‗roots‘ and ‗implications‘ at Loyola.‖47

The message was clear enough to a citizenry that had

just lived through long years in which terrifying race riots had exploded in hundreds of cities

across the country: if Loyola did not do something to improve race relations on campus, the

situation might explode in a manner with which Americans were becoming increasingly familiar.

The university administration, prompted by the protests, letters, and articles, did address

problems raised in the Vakas article. Students had circulated a petition demanding that the Rev.

Homer Jolley, the university president, release the name of the Jesuit priest who had allegedly

26

confronted the white male student over interracial dating. Rather than immediately identify the

priest, Jolley met privately in his office with the priest and students involved, including staff of

the Maroon. The administration shortly afterward announced the creation of a fact-finding

committee to investigate the incident and report back to the president. On April 24, 1969, the

committee released its report, in which it ―concluded that it could not determine whether the

incident occurred or not.‖ The accused priest, who was not publicly named in the report, issued

a statement saying that he ―was confident that the committee would find me innocent of any

connection with this incident.‖ He continued that ―the comment attributed to me is totally

foreign to anything I have said and done during the many years in which I have been, and still

am, actively engaged in the fight for interracial justice.‖ President Jolley criticized the

committee‘s report for not making a stronger statement regarding the accused priest‘s innocence,

―in view of the fact that a great deal of publicity was given to the charge against this member of

the Jesuit Community.‖48

The Jesuits were concerned with how the controversy would affect the public‘s image of

both the university and the order. Several priests signed a letter to the editor of the Maroon

accusing it of irresponsibility in printing the Vakas story, claiming it would unfairly damage the

reputation of all Jesuits at Loyola. The order‘s reputation, however, was already in need of

rehabilitation. The Jesuits, along with the other Catholic orders, had strongly resisted integration

of the archdiocese‘s schools, and they fought full integration of Loyola until 1962. In the

September 1968 issue of Harper’s, novelist Walker Percy, a New Orleans native, provocatively

commented that ―if the South once again secedes from the Union and throws in with Rhodesia

and South Africa, the Jesuits are entitled to a share of the credit.‖ Percy referred to the Jesuits‘

past and current history of racism and conservative politics, but he contrasted it with the order‘s

27

engagement with more progressive causes. As an example of the latter, Percy wrote about the

Rev. Louis Twomey, a Loyola faculty member who ran the university‘s Institute of Human

Relations, and who had long advocated for social justice and labor issues.49

Joseph Fichter, a Jesuit priest and Harvard-trained sociologist who arrived at Loyola in

the fall of 1947, provides an even more striking figure. Fichter led Loyola‘s first radical political

movement as a founder and faculty advisor of the student Southeastern Regional Interracial

Commission (SERINCO). The group, founded in 1948, pushed the boundaries of acceptable

interracial interaction in New Orleans and agitated for full integration of Loyola. It was

composed of students from Loyola, Xavier, Dominican College, Ursuline College, and Spring

Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, and it held monthly meetings at the various campuses. For

eight years, SERINCO organized an annual ―Interracial Day‖ to foster interracial cooperation

and understanding. The group had many supporters, but it endured constant harassment and

fierce resistance from members of the city‘s Catholic community. Loyola‘s administration

banned the distribution of SERINCO‘s newsletter, Christian Conscience, and, in 1956, it

prohibited the group from operating on campus. The administration also disallowed Fichter from

airing a series of lectures ―designed to dispel some of the racist myths that bedeviled rational

discussion of integration‖ on the university-owned radio station, WWL.50

Fichter‘s political

activities eventually led one president of the university to ask his Jesuit superiors to move Fichter

out of New Orleans.51

At the beginning of the 1968-1969 school year, months before the Jesuit priest

controversy appeared, Maroon writer Gary Atkins warned that the university could yet see itself

shaken by student unrest. Writing in the October 11 issue, Atkins stated that a large number of

students had

28

complaints about no academic atmosphere, intrusions on privacy, slighting of arts

in favor of sciences, and so on….There are also the more superficial complaints

about dorm rules, cafeteria food, curfews, required courses – the ‗non-

fundamentals.‘ Take any three, add a radical leader, well-prepared and well-

organized and Loyola could be as susceptible as Columbia to disruptions. Can it

happen here? Yes. Will it? That‘s up to the administrators and the students.52

Despite Atkins‘s warning, however, no such disruptions occurred at Loyola, even during the

tense weeks following the Jesuit priest controversy.

One explanation for why no such disruptions happened at Loyola is that the university

did not have a ―radical leader‖ willing to make the leap from rhetoric to physical confrontation.

Loyola‘s student protesters were not militant radicals intent on destroying the university and

overthrowing the government. As middle-class Catholics, they wanted to fix what they believed

was wrong with their university and community, and to accomplish this with the help of the

administration. Despite Expression‘s spokesman Dwight Ott‘s ominous-sounding implications,

no black students resorted to violence during the spring semester. Ron Nabonne, the head of

Expression, articulated frustration and anger in his pieces for the Maroon, but never threats of

violence. Other students on the left commented that disruptive demonstrations were not part of

their agenda.

In December 1968, two students had attempted to form a group similar to Students for a

Democratic Society (SDS), which by then had become a fiercely militant organization

responsible for the most spectacular campus uprisings across the country. The students referred

to their group as ―an SDS-type organization‖ and called it the moderate-sounding ―Liberal

Coalition.‖ They did not want to use the name SDS because ―students have a stereotyped idea of

29

SDS; they think SDS destroys buildings, etc.‖ The two students rejected the militant approach

and instead would seek ―to work through normal channels as much as possible.‖53

The Maroon

encouraged the organization, but the Liberal Coalition never became a major force at the

university. In fact, it barely got off the ground: Frank Aseron, a co-founder of the group, was

expelled from the university during the summer of 1969 for poor academic performance.

Violent campus disruptions were nowhere on the horizon at Loyola, but the Louisiana

Legislature had been studying the supposed threat of radical student groups to the state‘s

campuses. In January 1969, the Joint Legislative Committee on Un-American Activities

released its report, titled Students for a Democratic Society and the New Left: Their Danger to

the Educational Institutions of the State of Louisiana. The report opened with the statement that

―recent incidents should make it obvious to all that there are forces at work in Louisiana to

disrupt the orderly processes of government particularly in education at both the high school and

college level.‖ The report provided a survey of New Left groups and their political outlooks and

goals, focusing heavily on SDS, which the committee characterized as ―a part of the New Left,

perhaps the most dangerous [group] in the movement.‖ The report declared that ―at the present

time there are several radical organizations active in Louisiana,‖ among them the Progressive

Labor Party, the Sparticist League, and ―several other radical groups of lesser importance.‖54

Legislators paid special attention to the Student Liberal Foundation (SLF), which was

founded in the late 1950s and had, by 1969, ―become more entrenched‖ in the state‘s universities

and ―began to attract more hard-core leftists.‖ At one point, the SLF was approached by

members of SDS, who urged an integration of the two organizations on those campuses where

SDS could not secure a charter. According to the report, the result was that ―SDS simply

operated under the cover of SLF,‖ so that, in effect, ―SDS policies became SLF policies.‖

30

Legislators pointed out that ―SDS is known to have a chapter well established in a large

university in New Orleans,‖ but did not specify the university to which they were referring.55

The report stated that ―members of this chapter have been actively recruiting on other campuses

throughout the state and are beginning to make a definite impression on students with leftist

tendencies, those who are hoping for something different to embrace, and the Hippie and Beatnik

types of fellow travelers.‖ The attempts of SDS to mobilize high school students were also

noted.

The report did not recommend any direct action for the legislature or any official

department to take; rather, it only ―urge[d] that all institutions of learning thoroughly investigate

and consider the aims of The Students for a Democratic Society should they receive applications

for a chapter charter of this organization.‖ Moreover, it declared, ―The Committee feels that

there is no place in the educational system and institutions of learning in the State of Louisiana

for the Students for a Democratic Society.‖56

The next academic year arrived with signs of progress on race relations at Loyola, due in

part to the actions of those who complained about racial discrimination by the university‘s

fraternities. Within a month of returning to school for the fall 1969 semester, the Inter-Fraternity

Council (IFC) of Loyola issued a statement declaring that ―Loyola‘s fraternities encourage and

support the principles of social justice….The Inter-Fraternity Council desires all to be cognizant

of the fact that they do not condone and will not tolerate any discrimination with regard to race,

creed, or national origins.‖ Theology professor Gilbert Roxhugh‘s plea the previous semester for

members of the university community to put pressure on the fraternities worked, for the IFC also

declared that the statement ―was fostered by the harassment Loyola fraternities received last year

from students, faculty, and administrators.‖57

This act of the IFC was part of a national trend by

31

fraternities to eliminate their discriminatory racial policies; two national fraternities with

chapters at Loyola amended their constitutions over the summer to include a non-discrimination

clause. Also that semester, Loyola‘s chapter of the international business fraternity Delta Sigma

Pi gained its first black member when it inducted Edgar Chase.

In the fall semester, students from Loyola, Dillard, LSUNO, Tulane, and Xavier, as well

as several Loyola faculty members, formed a New Orleans chapter of the New Mobilization

Committee to End the War in Vietnam.58

New MOBE, as it was called, organized a national

Moratorium Day against the Vietnam War on October 15, 1969. Some 1,500 Loyola students

signed a petition calling for the suspension of classes the day of the Moratorium, and the faculty

senate passed a resolution supporting the student petition. Despite these actions, the

administration would not officially endorse the Moratorium. Vice-President for Academic

Affairs Thomas Clancy said that ―the university cannot by its decisions or actions become the

proponent of any one political position or ideological position.‖ He declared, however, that

students who participated in the Moratorium ―may freely do so without let or hindrance,‖ and

they would not be punished for skipping classes.59

By October 1969, the time of the Moratorium, a majority of American Catholics had

turned against the war. Several bishops had come out publicly with anti-war statements, but the

Church hierarchy remained, as it had for years, largely silent. Instead, what protest there was

against the war came, as it were, from below, ―from the priests, nuns and lay people who rejected

the pattern of silent complicity and, often enough, risked ecclesiastical disapproval as well as

civil penalty for their efforts.‖ The most prominent anti-war Catholic clergy who practiced the

so-called ―ultraresistance‖ to the war were Daniel and Philip Berrigan. The Berrigan brothers

were both priests, and both were arrested in May 1968 after burning with homemade napalm the

32

records of a Selective Service Office in Maryland.60

In a speech he gave at Cornell University

after his arrest, Daniel Berrigan lamented that ―the Society of Jesus, which is my community,

which I love very much, which is the source of almost everything I have ever learned and valued

is silent and will probably remain silent.‖61

Continuing their commitment to a Catholic approach to protest, the demonstrators began

the day of the Moratorium with a mass for peace in the commons between the two dormitories

on Loyola‘s campus. Following the mass, a crowd of about 200 gathered as students and faculty

held memorial services for those killed in Vietnam. One professor gave a brief history of anti-

war movements. English professor Herman Levy railed against the war and the government,

calling President Richard Nixon ―a rotten son of a bitch‖ and denouncing what he called ―a

professional murdering branch of the army and government.‖ Senior Ralph Adamo, a Student

Council representative and editorial writer for the Maroon, read anti-war poems to close out the

memorial service62

After the campus events concluded, students from Loyola and Tulane met on Freret

Street to march downtown together. Police estimated that from 2500 to 3000 people converged

in downtown New Orleans for the main rally. In Duncan Plaza, outside of City Hall, participants

listened to more speeches. Veteran labor and community organizers Walter and Elizabeth

Rogers addressed the crowd as dusk approached and ―students with their candles sat in

semicircles on the grass.‖ The seventy-eight-year-old Elizabeth alluded to the slogan ―Burn,

baby, burn!‖ that black rioters across the country yelled as they torched their cities when she said

that ―if the U.S. government continues to burn babies, babies are going to burn back. We are

burning babies in Vietnam with napalm, roasting them alive….We burn babies here with

starvation, debts, mortgages, pullution [sic], and Jim Crow schools.‖ The crowd applauded and

33

Rogers led a call-and-response with lines from the Declaration of Independence. As night fell

and the air chilled, ―small fires built with paper and cardboard…began to spring up about the

sidewalk and street.‖ Throughout the rest of the evening, bands entertained the demonstrators,

and arguments between protesters and war supporters broke out.63

One of the important aspects of the student movement of the 1960s is that it was also, in

a sense, a faculty movement. At Loyola, faculty members had participated in the Moratorium

and the protests against racial discrimination at Phillip‘s and Cusimano‘s. They supported the

student demonstration against the administration‘s use of undercover police on campus. In the

pages of the Maroon, professors had publicly lobbied for changes to the curriculum and various

university regulations. The combination of student and faculty agitation challenged the power of

the university administration to set policy unilaterally.

As students returned from Christmas break in January 1970, they discovered that a

serious conflict had broken out between faculty members and administrators. The Maroon put

out a special issue during the first week of classes to inform the student body of what had taken

place over the holidays. The editors stated that ―while no one is quite sure what has been

happening at Loyola over the past three weeks, the confusion, name-calling, and politicking

indicate that this is a time of change for the University.‖64

In an emergency meeting of the

University Senate on January 15, faculty members voted on a motion declaring that the Senate

―takes exception to and deplores procedural misusage by the present vice president for academic

affairs [Father Thomas Clancy],‖ and it also ―asked that the Board of Directors remove Dr. Frank

Crabtree, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, from office.‖65

By then, the sequence of

events leading up to the Senate‘s motion had been revealed.

34

The Senate charged that Vice President Clancy had violated university procedures and

abused his authority by arbitrarily making decisions about academic departments. The Senate

stated that ―he has appointed chairmen without the consent of the department involved and has

deposed and attempted to depose chairmen in the same unprocedural manner. He has terminated

individual contracts without the consent of chairmen and other faculty involved. He has

arbitrarily assigned rank to faculty without the approval or recommendation of the faculty or the

department involved.‖66

The Senate also listed six specific complaints against Dean Crabtree;

many were similar to those against Clancy and involved what the Senate saw as arbitrary abuses

of power meant to punish certain faculty members and minimize faculty participation in the

affairs of academic departments.

The charges made against both men were serious and the show of faculty solidarity was

such that the administration response was swift and dramatic. A week after the University

Senate meeting, the Board of Directors met to choose a replacement for Clancy. Though no

replacement was immediately decided upon, the Board stated that Clancy would not be in office

after June 1. In early February, the university president accepted Crabtree‘s resignation and

appointed the Rev. Joseph Tetlow as Dean of Arts and Sciences in his place.

Another skirmish involving administrators versus faculty and students took place later in

February 1970. The university administration chose not to renew the contract of Tom Blouin, a

popular instructor in the English department, for failure to make substantial progress toward

completion of his Ph.D. Blouin had previously taught at Louisiana State University with

Professor John Corrington, and Corrington brought Blouin with him to Loyola when he was

hired as chairman of the English department. Ralph Adamo, a senior English major at the time,

remembers Blouin as being ―a brilliant teacher‖ and ―that kind of intellectual that you…read

35

about who‘s also charismatic too….There were students who really became his disciples.‖67

After the administration‘s decision to fire Blouin became public, Gary Atkins wrote in the

Maroon that ―Blouin‘s student support runs wide – from the ‗involved‘ to the average student.‖

Professor Corrington and Vice-President Clancy debated Blouin‘s case in Loyola‘s Danna

Center as dozens of students and faculty looked on. Students in the audience ―hissed, moaned

over and yelled at‖ Clancy, and they repeatedly pressed him to explain the university‘s decision

to fire Blouin. When he stated that the order to terminate Blouin ―was passed by the Board of

Directors,‖ one student asked, ―But what is the reason? Why should the top management of the

university be concerned about one man with a master‘s degree?‖ Clancy replied, ―I don‘t know.

You‘ll have to ask them.‖68

Corrington eventually brought the Blouin issue before the university‘s Rank and Tenure

Committee. Acting Dean of Arts and Sciences Joseph Tetlow then sent a letter threatening to

fire Corrington if he did not withdraw his request for an investigation by the committee. Tetlow

also stated in the letter that he was removing Corrington as chairman of the English department.

In March 1970, a student petition supporting Blouin was signed by over 600 students and

presented to the university president, and over 100 students demonstrated in front of the

university along St. Charles Avenue. Professor John Joerg of the English department believed

that students and faculty should collaborate on the issue and ―sent a letter to faculty

members…urging them to ‗join the student pickets.‘‖69

Joerg and Corrington both demonstrated

alongside the students, with Corrington holding a picket that read, ―What happens when truth

dies?‖70

Despite the protests and petitions, the Board of Directors upheld Blouin‘s termination at

the end of the year.

36

The Blouin affair was an important moment in the increasing politicization of some

members of the student body, for it was another instance in which they found themselves

increasingly at odds with what they perceived as an intransigent, unresponsive administration.

Student Louis Lassus wrote in the Maroon that ―the most outstanding phenomenon to occur at

this university in the past year has been the liberalization of a good many students and faculty.‖

According to Lassus, ―the liberalization can be traced to a number of things,‖ one of which was

the Blouin affair, which ―united both faculty and students in a confrontation with the

administration.‖71

Ralph Adamo recalled that students were beginning to identify their

dissatisfaction with the university administration with their anger over the Vietnam War and the

Nixon administration:

The Blouin issue became completely wrapped up for a lot of people….We had our own

version of a government that we hated and mistrusted,…the president and university

administrators who were doing things against our will and against the popular will, and

who were not at all responsive to that will.72

The actions of several hundred Loyola students during the national student strike at the end of

the spring semester showed just how much they had become radicalized during the school year.

On April 30, 1970, President Richard Nixon announced that the United States was

expanding its bombing campaign of Vietnam into Cambodia. Within hours of his

announcement, protests occurred at colleges and universities around the country. Four days

later, on May 4, National Guard troops opened fire on protesters at Kent State University in

Ohio, killing four students. The combination of Nixon‘s announcement and the killings at Kent

State prompted a nationwide student strike; roughly thirty percent of the country‘s colleges and

universities ―participated in some way‖ in the strike.73

37

On Thursday, May 7, some one thousand students from Loyola, Tulane, and LSUNO gathered in

front of the Loyola Field House and began a march downtown to Jackson Square. Several

protesters were arrested as the group made its way along St. Charles Avenue, including Loyola‘s

Herman Levy, who was arrested for ―disturbing the peace and using obscene language.‖ A New

Orleans Times-Picayune reporter observed that, as the students gathered in Jackson Square, ―a

team of policemen armed with billy sticks advanced on the scene‖ and watched over the

demonstration. The reporter noted that ―the march…was much less joyful than moratorium day

seven months ago,‖ and that ―raised fists were to be seen much more often among the marchers

than the raised two-finger peace signs.‖ However, the rally ended without any confrontations

between students and police.74

On Loyola‘s campus that afternoon, several hundred students gathered in the quad

outside the Danna Center. That night, many decided to sleep in the quad as a form of protest.

The next day, Friday, May 8, they demanded of President Jolley that the Catholic university take

a moral stand and condemn the bombing of Cambodia and the killings at Kent State. They also

demanded that the administration cancel final exams for that semester. When President Jolley

stated that he could not specifically endorse their demands, students began discussing whether or

not to occupy the Danna Center. Several hundred students were inside the building, and Ralph

Adamo recalled that two of them joined their hands and lifted up their arms,

forming an archway….Someone said, ―This was the vote on whether we would sit in. If

you wanted to sit in, come under the archway and we would count your vote.‖ And I

don‘t know how many people, hundreds of people went under the archway and plopped

back down, and the sit-in had begun.75

38

Students then elected members for a committee that would speak for the group and act as

intermediaries with the university administration.

The next day the students decided on a course of action for the protest, which they

planned to continue into the following week. The forms of protest that they adopted again reveal

how central their Catholicism was to the protesters. They held a candlelight vigil that evening in

front of the administration headquarters at Marquette Hall, and at midnight about 150 students

began fasting. During Sunday mass the following morning, students held a demonstration along

St. Charles Avenue outside of Holy Name of Jesus Church. With no moral leadership from the

administration, the students had taken it upon themselves to insist on how a Catholic university

should act in response to what had become, for them, an unequivocally immoral war.

Early Monday morning, a group of Loyola students who had left New Orleans a couple

of days before to attend a rally in Washington returned to campus. According to Ralph Adamo,

the protesters in the Danna Center ―were kind of hanging around, having our conversations,

chatting, eating,‖ when the returning students arrived. Those who had been to Washington were

―just fired up, totally radicalized‖ from their experience at the capitol, and they rounded up a

group to confront the Jesuits in their residence at Thomas Hall. When they entered the building

they found cooks preparing breakfast. The students began ―slamming their boots on the ground

and yelling things up the stairs,‖ and a priest appeared in the stairwell, telling them to leave the

building.76

The students did not leave until after they had met with President Jolley for about an

hour, although they were unable to convince him to concede to their demands. That evening,

after the students voted to continue the protest ―indefinitely‖ until the university took a stand on

the issues, they burned the administration officials in effigy during a demonstration outside of

the dormitories.77

39

On Tuesday, May 12, students and faculty held another general demonstration in front of

Marquette Hall. Speakers gave anti-war speeches, denounced Loyola‘s administration, and

vowed to continue on with the strike and fasting. For all of the rhetoric and protest, however, the

occupation came to a sudden end the next day. On Wednesday afternoon, a majority of the

students voted to leave the Danna Center because ―the administration of Loyola will not respect

peaceful protest and because we are unequivocally opposed to campus disruption.‖ The students

had grown frustrated with the administration‘s refusal to concede to any of their demands, and

they had given up. Along with the vote to end the occupation, students voted to ―reaffirm our

disappointment in the failure of the administration to take a strong, moral stand‖ on Vietnam and

Kent State and ―the failure of the administration to give sufficient consideration to the hardships

of students in taking final exams at this time.‖ The students also voted to continue the general

strike at the beginning of the next semester if more demands ―have not been satisfactorily dealt

with.‖ Among these demands were ―the tenure of Mr. Tom Blouin; the chairmanship of Dr.

John Corrington,‖ and ―the resignation of the university president, the vice president for

academic affairs and the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.‖78

Despite the vote to officially end the occupation, a group of fifteen students and faculty

refused to leave the Danna Center. Just before two o‘clock the next morning, twenty-five police

officers arrived at Loyola to remove the demonstrators; when they still refused to leave, the

police arrested them for trespassing and ―interfering with the educational process.‖79

A small

crowd outside the Danna Center cheered as police hauled the protesters away. On Sunday, May

17, the university lowered the American flag on campus to half-mast ―as a symbol of our grief‖

over those killed in the Vietnam war and at Kent State and Jackson State University, where two

black students had been shot dead by National Guard troops during a protest.80

Ultimately, the

40

administration dropped charges against those arrested. Of the four faculty members who refused

to leave the Danna Center, three were fired and one continued to teach at Loyola because he was

protected by tenure.81

A study of the campus unrest of May 1970 found that a large majority of students,

faculty, and administrators believed that ―incidents of disruption or violence were not likely to

occur on their campuses during the new school year [1970-71].‖82

This proved to be the case at

Loyola, where many of the student and faculty protest leaders had left after the upheavals of the

spring semester. Ralph Adamo recalled, ―We all graduated.…All the people I remember

being…either on that [protest] committee or…leaders of this thing were seniors. And so we

really were all gone.‖ Several of the students arrested in May had graduated or been expelled,

and three of the faculty members arrested, including Herman Levy, were fired from the

university. The firing of Tom Blouin continued to get coverage in the Maroon, but there were no

more demonstrations over the issue. John Corrington was reinstated as chairman of the English

department by Joseph Tetlow, who remained acting Dean of Arts and Sciences despite student

anger over his role in the firing of Blouin and the temporary removal of Corrington. Two other

polarizing administrators, Father Clancy and President Jolley, had left Loyola over the summer.

The only demonstration that year was a peaceful meeting about dormitory regulations in

February 1971. Around 250 students gathered in the Danna Center to protest the decision by the

new university president, the Rev. Michael Kennelly, not to extend visitation and curfew hours

in the dorms, and to ban the use of incense in dorm rooms. The day after the meeting, the

president met with representatives of two groups that represented dormitory residents, the Men‘s

Residence Council and the Women‘s Residence Council.

41

President Kennelly explained to the Maroon why he was opposed to loosening the

current regulations. Kennelly complained that ―there is a lack of discipline in all of

this….They‘re staying up late at night. They‘re blaring radios. They‘re blasting television

sets….This isn‘t discipline. This is a way of life that will only lead to more carelessness.‖ He

continued: ―[W]e have to keep the discipline and order that is needed for good work – sound

work that will provide a reason for their parents to make a great sacrifice….It‘s a tremendous

burden on the parents of these people.‖ He concluded by positing that the university

administrators, as Fathers in the Catholic Church, should act in the role of parents: ―Why

shouldn‘t we Fathers, cognizant of what sacrifice is, keep an eye on the parent back at home and

say ‗They‘re sacrificing to send this boy or girl.‘ For what? Blasting the radio?...We are directing

them. We love them too much to endanger any one of them.‖83

Despite President Kennelly‘s sincere recitation of the idea of in loco parentis, the practice

had largely become a casualty of the student movement. The student protesters of the 1960s

rejected in loco parentis restrictions and insisted on their right to govern their own lives. One

Catholic commentator joined the students‘ calls for reform, arguing that ―the important point is

that the immediate norm for Catholic university student behavioral standards can never be

‗parental wishes‘ but must always be the needs of students as members of a Catholic university

community‖ The traditional in loco parentis restrictions must be lifted, he declared, and ―a new,

viable, realistic formulation must be found which more accurately describes the university-

student relationship.‖84

Most universities went along with student sentiment by loosening and

revising outdated, arbitrary, or overly strict regulations. At Loyola, students had won victories

by persuading the administration to loosen dress code regulations and to adopt the Policy

Statement on Student Rights and Freedoms. In May 1971, Kennelly sided with students and

42

adopted a policy, already approved by the Student Council, which eliminated ―mandatory

dormitory living for sophomores, juniors, and seniors who have consent from their parents.‖85

The policy would be in place as an ―experiment‖ for the next school year and would then be

brought before the Board of Directors for a decision on whether or not it would continue.

In September 1970, the Council on Academic Planning (CAP), commissioned in 1969 to

outline a long-range academic plan for the university, issued its preliminary report. The council

surveyed the state of Loyola and made recommendations on improving facilities, strengthening

programs, and raising funds to continue the university‘s expansion. The CAP also touched on

the areas of authority, governance, and curriculum, three aspects of university life that were often

at the heart of the student protest movement. The CAP noted that the university no longer

operated on an authoritative basis in which the ―administrative structure channels all decision-

making on every level to the president of the university.‖ The president now shared power with

the Board of Directors, and faculty and student advisory bodies had gained more importance. As

far as student participation is concerned, ―while progress has been made, students believe that

legitimate goals have not been attained….Students believe that they can contribute to ordered

and profitable change if given an opportunity to serve meaningfully on relevant committees.‖ In

terms of the relevance of the curriculum and classroom atmosphere, ―there should be a

progressive movement away from the classroom lecture-contact hour method of teaching to one

of individualized study and tailored instruction‖ with ―a more flexible curriculum, and an

increasing emphasis on cross fertilization among and between disciplines.‖86

The CAP was composed of fifteen students, faculty, and administrators, but its report was

produced with the input of the hundreds more surveyed over the course of a year. The report

shows that all involved considered the implications of the recent events at the university and took

43

seriously their task of constructing a new vision of the university‘s future. Significantly, the

council took into consideration and formally recommended many of the changes in the university

structure that students and faculty had fought for during the second half of the 1960s. They

recognized that despite all of its parochialism, what Loyola had gone through in the last half of

the 1960s was not isolated and could not be ignored or settled without major changes to the

university. The Loyola students that raised the issues of civil rights, student freedoms, and

Vietnam were integral in shaping the vision of Loyola‘s future as outlined in the CAP report.

44

Conclusion

Change might have come to Loyola in any case, but the persistent and vocal display of

grievances on campus and in the Maroon made the need for change much more urgent. This was

so largely because the students were acting as Catholics in a campaign to make their Catholic

university worthy of the name. In their campaign against racial discrimination, the students

revealed the hypocrisy of widespread racism on a Catholic campus. By putting pressure on the

administration, the fraternities and sororities, and their fellow students, activists had a role in

eliminating some of the institutional racism that existed at Loyola. In their protests against the

Vietnam War, the protesters believed they were acting as a Catholic community should, by

taking a moral stand against an immoral war. They lobbied for and received from successive

administrations more participation in decision-making at the university, and they influenced the

creation of a Policy Statement on Student Rights and Freedoms. These, too, were part of a broad

pattern of change at Catholic universities around the country to modernize and make themselves

more responsive to the needs of their students. Moreover, student-faculty relations improved

during the years of protest as the two groups collaborated to address mutual concerns. Loyola‘s

activist students often felt that they were alone on an island of political conservatism, racial

ignorance, and apathy, but their causes linked them to the student movement that encompassed

not just America but many other parts of the world as well.

45

Notes

1 ―Civil Rights Discussion Set,‖ Maroon, October 9, 1964.

2 ―Responsibility Lacking,‖ Maroon, December 11, 1964.

3 ―Students, Faculty Stage Sit-In,‖ Dottie Lee, Maroon, February 19, 1965.

4 Andrew M. Greeley, From Backwater to Mainstream: A Profile of Catholic Higher Education (New York:

McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1969), 77.

5 Davy Laborde, Letter to the Editor, Maroon, November 18, 1966.

6 Jim Swinson, ―Irate Freshman,‖ Maroon, December 2, 1966.

7 Carolyn Bereznak, ―Leaders Get Involved – Don‘t Just Command,‖ Maroon, January 14, 1966.

8 David W. Levy, The Debate over Vietnam (Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 96-97.

9 ―Viet Election ‗Founding of a New Nation‘,‖ Maroon April 29, 1966.

10

Richard E. Peterson, ―The Student Left in American Higher Education,‖ Students in Revolt, 222.

11

Michael Imparato, ―180 Degree Turn,‖ Maroon, Sept 30, 1966.

12

Carolyn Bereznak, ―Faculty-Student Board Conducts First Meeting,‖ Maroon, October 14, 1966.

13

―TV Dept. Head Named; ROTC Status Examined,‖ Maroon, May 17, 1967.

14

John R. Connoly, Maroon, April 21, 1967; Steve Griffith, ―Lack of Forum,‖ Maroon, April 14, 1967.

15

P.H. Ratterman, The Emerging Catholic University (New York: Fordham University Press, 1968), 3, 7. See also

Philip Gleason, Contending with Modernity: Catholic Higher Education in the Twentieth Century (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1995), William P. Leahy, Adapting to America: Catholics, Jesuits, and Higher Education

in the Twentieth Century (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1991), Neil G. McCluskey, ed., The

Catholic University: A Modern Appraisal (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1970), and Andrew

M. Greeley, From Backwater to Mainstream: A Profile of Catholic Higher Education (New York: McGraw-Hill

Book Company, 1969).

16

Ferrel Guillory, ―Discontent Prevails,‖ Maroon, May 5, 1967.

17

―Loyola Equals Change, Yet More to be Done,‖ Maroon, September 15, 1967.

18

―Group set up to delineate Student Rights,‖ Maroon, December 1, 1967.

19

Ratterman, The Emerging Catholic University, 126-131.

20

―Rules for dress are promulgated by Rev. Molloy,‖ Maroon, September 29, 1967. The student protesters of the

1960s fought against university dress codes around the country, and the counterculture that arose during those years

was characterized by changes in dress and appearance, psychedelic rock music, and drug use. The student

protesters, however, were not always a part of the counterculture, which was, very often, not political at all.

Students at Loyola grew mustaches and beards and wore their hair long, but the counterculture did not have as heavy

a presence there as compared to Tulane University right next door. For more on the counterculture, see Sharon

46

Monteith, American Culture in the 1960s (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), Arthur Marwick, The

Sixties: Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, c. 1958-c. 1974 (New York: Oxford

University Press, 1998), and Terry Anderson, The Movement and the Sixties (New York: Oxford University Press,

1995).

21

Maroon, March 22 or 29, 1968.

22

Ed Anderson, ―Spurred by agent story faculty members circulate letter,‖ Maroon, March 29, 1968.

23

―President‘s Statement,‖ Maroon, March 29, 1968.

24

Ed Anderson, ―President establishes mechanism to maintain university confidence,‖ Maroon, April 5, 1968.

25

Adam Fairclough, Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915-1972 (Athens: The

University of Georgia Press, 1999), 427.

26

Teddy Welgloss, ―Negro at Loyola,‖ Maroon, February 2, 1968.

27

Ferrel Guillory, ―Frats accept 114; no Negroes tapped,‖ Maroon, February 23, 1968; ―Committee established to

prevent discrimination by campus organizations,‖ Maroon, March 29, 1968.

28

Ron Nabonne, ―We can‘t wait forever,‖ Maroon, April 26, 1968.

29

Letter to the Editor, Maroon, May 3, 1968.

30

―This year teaches LU its problems,‖ Maroon, May 3, 1968.

31

Marwick, The Sixties, 656-57.

32

For international student movements, see Jeremi Suri, Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of

Détente (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), Gerard DeGroot, ed., Student Protest: The Sixties and

After (London: Longman, 1998), and Seymour Martin Lipset and Philip G. Altbach, eds., Students in Revolt

(Boston: Beacon Press, 1970).

33

―Detailed Administration policy issued for disruptive student demonstrations,‖ Maroon, September 13, 1968.

34

―Statement of Student Rights and Freedoms,‖ Maroon, October 11, 1968.

35

Gary Atkins, ―LU rights committee approves ‗Word‘ sale,‖ Maroon, February, 14, 1969.

36

―In letter to Father Jolley, Council urges veto or implementation,‖ Maroon, May 2, 1969.

37

Louis Lassus, ―Father Jolley erases ‗Word‘,‖ Maroon, April 25, 1969.

38

Steve Vakas, ―The accent is on color,‖ Maroon, February 28, 1969.

39

Rick Frey, ―March against local lounge planned,‖ Maroon, March 7, 1969.

40

Rick Frey, ―Picketing of Cusimano‘s takes place peacefully,‖ Maroon, March 14, 1969.

41

Ed Anderson, ―Reason, calm must now prevail,‖ Maroon, March 14, 1969.

42

Mike Lange, ―Rev. Molloy asks change in frat voting,‖ Maroon, February 28, 1969.

43

Ron Nabonne, ―Blacks cry out,‖ Maroon, March 7, 1969.

47

44

Gilbert Roxhugh, ―Anti-brotherhood fostered by LU fraternity system,‖ Maroon, March 14, 1969.

45

―Loyola Dean Takes Swipe at Campus Social Cliques,‖ The Times-Picayune, March 13, 1969, section 5.

46

Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 429-430.

47

Steve Vakas, ―LU group voices backing for SUNO,‖ Maroon, April 25, 1969.

48

Louis Lassus, ―Investigative group issues hearings report,‖ Maroon, May 15, 1969.

49

Walker Percy, ―New Orleans Mon Amour,‖ Harper’s Magazine, September, 1968, 88.

50

Fairclough, 200-201.

51

R. Bentley Anderson, Black, White, and Catholic: New Orleans Interracialism, 1947-1956 (Nashville: Vanderbilt

University Press, 2005).

52

Gary Atkins, ―Loyola and ‗student power‘,‖ Maroon, October 11, 1968.

53

―Campus activist groups organizes: membership now at 35,‖ Maroon, December 6, 1968.

54

Louisiana Legislature, The Joint Legislative Committee on Un-American Activities, Students for a Democratic

Society and the New Left: Their Danger to the Educational Institutions of the State of Louisiana (Baton Rouge,

1969), 9, 13, 17.

55

Louisiana Legislature, 17-18. Gregory Duhe, in his study of SDS activity at LSUNO in the late 1960s, stated that,

although that university had a SLF chapter for a number of years, an SDS chapter would not be officially formed

until the spring of 1969. Therefore, it is most likely that the report is referring to Tulane University. See Gregory

Duhe, ―The FBI and Students for a Democratic Society at the University of New Orleans, 1968-1971,‖ Louisiana

History 43 (2003), 53-74.

56

Louisiana Legislature, 18, 22.

57

―In policy statement, IFC explains frats‘ purpose,‖ Maroon, September 12, 1969.

58

Annalyn Swan, ―Anti-Vietnam group formed by students,‖ Maroon, September 26, 1969.

59

―Loyola to Hold Class as Usual,‖ The Times-Picayune, October 12, 1969, section 1.

60

Levy, The Debate over Vietnam, 98-99.

61

Alexander Bloom and Wini Breines, eds., “Takin’ it to the Streets”: A Sixties Reader, 2nd

edition (New York:

Oxford University Press, 2003), 190.

62

Annalyn Swan, ―Memorial services draw 200,‖ Maroon, October 17, 1969.

63

―Autobiography of Elizabeth Rogers,‖ unpublished manuscript, 10, Elizabeth Rogers Collection, Box 19, Folder

16; ―Talk at New Mobe, New Orleans, October 15, 1969,‖ Elizabeth Rogers Collection, Box 19, Folder 2. Vincent

Lee and Joan Treadway, ―Protesters Call for Halt to War,‖ The Times-Picayune, October 16, 1969, sec. 1.

64

―Editor‘s Note,‖ Maroon, January 27, 1970.

65

Louis Lassus, ―Senate Starts Controversy,‖ Maroon, January 27, 1970.

48

66

―Minutes of Senate Meeting,‖ Maroon, January 27, 1970.

67

Ralph Adamo, interview by the author, 4.

68

Gary Atkins, ―A day at the Free Speech Mike: An analysis,‖ Maroon, February 27, 1970.

69

―Faculty circulate letter, petition,‖ Maroon, April 3, 1970.

70

Adamo, 4.

71

Louis Lassus, ―The seeds are planted,‖ Maroon, March 24, 1970.

72

Most historical analyses of the student protest movement argue that it was a conflation of the issues of racial

discrimination, the Vietnam War, and campus and local concerns that led to the radicalization of students. Adamo

states, however, that it was the Blouin affair and the actions of the Nixon administration that led to the radicalization

of the students at Loyola, and that racial discrimination ―was a separate issue in a way.‖ He states that the multitude

of issues ―probably all merges…somehow…but I don‘t remember race being part of that conflation.‖ (Adamo, 8,

11.)

73

Urban Research Corporation, On Strike…Shut it Down! A Report on the First National Student Strike in U.S.

History (Chicago, 1970), 3.

74

Joan Treadway, ―Police, Peace Rally Clash Averted at Jackson Square,‖ The Times-Picayune, May 8, 1970, sec.

1.

75

Adamo, 19.

76

Adamo, 22.

77

―200 At Loyola Extend Sit-In,‖ The Times-Picayune, May 12, 1970, sec. 1.

78

―End Is Voted To Occupation,‖ The Times-Picayune, May 14, 1970, sec. 1.

79

According to the Times-Picayune, the ―laws concerning the ‗educational process‘ were enacted last year by the

legislature‖ and were classified as felonies.‖ ―Police Arrest Protest Group,‖ The Times-Picayune, May 15, 1970,

sec. 1.

80

―Flag Will Go To Half Mast,‖ The Times-Picayune, May 17, 1970, sec. 1.

81

The four faculty members arrested were Tom Blouin, Thomas Grange, John Joerg, and Herman Levy. Joerg was

the one faculty member who remained at Loyola. ―Police Arrest Protest Group,‖ and Debbie Bourque,

―Administration drops demonstration charges,‖ Maroon, September 4, 1970.

82

Garth Buchanan, Survey of Campus Incidents as Interpreted by College Presidents, Faculty Chairmen and

Student Body Presidents (Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute, 1970), 4.

83

―Father Kennelly: Priorities and Policies,‖ Maroon, February 5, 1971.

84

Ratterman, The Emerging Catholic University, 64-65.

85

Debbie Bourque, ―Students can live off campus now,‖ Maroon, May 7, 1971.

86

―Loyola – A look to the future: excerpts from the CAP report,‖ Maroon, September 18, 1970.

49

Bibliography

I. Primary Sources

1. Archival Collections

Elizabeth Rogers Collection. Special Collections, Earl K. Long Library, University of New

Orleans.

The Maroon. University Archives, Special Collections, J. Edgar and Louise S. Monroe Library,

Loyola University New Orleans.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune. Newspaper Collection, 1787-1974, Louisiana Division, New

Orleans Public Library.

2. Other Primary Sources

Adamo, Ralph. Interview by author. Digital recording. New Orleans, Louisiana, 18 March 2009.

Report of the President’s Commission on Campus Unrest. New York: Commerce Clearing

House, 1970.

Study of Racial Attitudes in Louisiana Fall of 1966, Volume I. Dallas, Tx.: Louis, Bowles and

Grace, Inc., 1966.

Buchanan, Garth. Survey of Campus Incidents as Interpreted by College Presidents, Faculty

Chairmen and Student Body Presidents. Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute, 1970.

Louisiana Legislature. The Joint Legislative Committee on Un-American Activities. Students

for a Democratic Society and the New Left: Their Danger to the Educational Institutions of

the State of Louisiana. Baton Rouge, 1969.

Urban Research Corporation. On Strike…Shut it Down! A Report on the First National Student

Strike in U.S. History. Chicago, 1970.

II. Secondary Sources

Anderson, R. Bentley. Black, White, and Catholic: New Orleans Interracialism, 1947-1956.

Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 2005.

Anderson, Terry H. The Movement and the Sixties. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Avorn, Jerry L., ed. University in Revolt: A History of the Columbia Crisis. London:

Macdonald, 1968.

50

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52

Vita

Robert Lorenz grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana, and received his B.A. in history from Loyola

University New Orleans in 2002.